


The Summer Girls

by drowsyreaper



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work
Genre: F/F, Gen, Lesbians, Magic, Mermaids, Sea Monsters, Small Towns, Things Go Wrong, bargains with eldritch horrors, no one read the fine print, seaside gothic, what a twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 19:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16069763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drowsyreaper/pseuds/drowsyreaper
Summary: The people of Heron's Point have thrived for generations thanks to a clever bargain with the local cryptids.They have not been good about keeping up with the Terms and Conditions.





	The Summer Girls

Heron's Point was as small and old a seaside town as anyone could imagine. The populace skirted a fine line between neighborly and incestuous, the economy relied too heavily on summer tourists, and most of the buildings were only holding up against the hurricanes and harsh winters thanks to hope, prayers, and no small amount of black magic.

It was a fact, though a rarely acknowledged one, that seaside towns only survived and thrived based on the strength of the contract made at their founding. Every town had its source of life-giving magic –- a ley line, bargains made with local cryptids or minor deities, magic amplifying quirks of geology, space rocks, et cetera –- and Heron's Point was no exception.

Heron's Point had the Summer Girls.

There's was a simple, reciprocal contract, one that asked little and yielded much. The old-timers felt an acute, undeserved pleasure at the bare bones of it, as if they'd been the clever ones who'd crafted it centuries ago. All they had to do was host a single Girl each summer and the town would prosper. Simple!

The contract went something like this: 

Give the Summer Girl whatever She wants and you'll never know hardship. Feed Her and your nets will never break, nor be empty. House Her, and your homes will stand against the most fearsome storm. Give Her gifts, and money will fill your coffers. Giver Her blood, and She'll never spill yours. 

In practice, it worked out a little more like: 

Let the Summer Girl take and take and take, any and everything She wants, and if She takes something dear, well, is it dearer than your life? 

The answer was - and had always been - a resounding no. Easier all around for people to just look the other way. Adhere to the contract. Take care of the Summer Girls. They would take care of everything else. 

There were rules, of course. A Code of Conduct had been drafted ages ago, to make sure no talented fool doomed the town by accident. Every spring before the tourists arrived, amidst the Memorial Day parade preparations and 4th of July regatta fundraising campaigns, they reissued the Code. Fliers were sent home with children on the last day of school. Leaflets were slipped under doors. The local radio station - a tiny affair, broadcast on an AM frequency which only the townies knew to listen to – issued daily reminders along with updates on the Girls all summer long. 

The phrasing of the Code would change every few decades; to adjust to the current vernacular, to add more relevant details, to include new horrifying anecdotes, and so on. But in the end, the Code always boiled down to four key points.  
1\. Be polite (or else).  
2\. Give the Summer Girls whatever they wanted (or else).  
3\. Do not interfere in their affairs (or else).  
4\. Keep the secret (or else). 

Nestled between the lines, unspoken but always right there if you paid attention, was the understanding that tourists and out-of-towners were fair game. It was their blood that paid the balance in full each year, after all. 

It could be hard on the locals, sometimes, to see families looking for a missing child they already knew to be beyond saving. Hard to misdirect grieving relatives looking for people whose blood and bones belonged to the sea. The citizens of Heron's Point felt for these strangers, they really did. But the town needed the Summer Girls, and the Summer Girls needed their due, and, well, everyone had to die sometime. Better that death mean something in the grand scheme of things, right?

That's not to say some people didn't try to play the hero every now and then. The town was rife with cautionary tales. Canny observers could often tell if a Girl fancied someone in particular, and the more softhearted citizens would, on occasion, try warn these people off. 

Everyone thought they were clever. Right up until the Girls came for them. 

Winter storms would demolish specific houses but leave the rest untouched. Crews vanished from their boats in calm seas. Brief disappearances ended with the bodies showing up in shallow water, with all the soft bits gnawed off. And then a decade would pass in peace until someone got the itching of a conscience again. 

The ocean was not known for its' forgiving nature and neither were the Girls. 

Heron's Point had adapted to it by developing a sort of town-wide neighborhood watch. Had anyone been rude to a Girl? Was someone talking too much to a tourist? Was it an accident or idiocy? Was there time to apologize? 

Most often the watch succeeded. It had been decades since anyone had offended a Summer Girl all that badly. But it had not been so long ago that the repercussions were beyond living memory. Thus, the watch persisted. 

That year, they hosted Marisol. She arrived with the summer solstice, when the moon was waning gibbous and a storm raged far off on the horizon. Later, some folks would speculate that those had been omens. But you could spend a lifetime analyzing omens about the Girls and learn many fascinating things but few useful ones. And besides, most people said, there was little point in looking for signs after the fact. 

Regardless of the weather, the locals were primed to be wary. Marisol was a new Girl, one they'd never seen before and of whom they had no record. New Girls put the town on edge. 

Certainly, it was possible Marisol had visited before (records were always a dicey matter in Heron's Point, as the fury of Girls past had decimated the Town Hall at least four times that anyone could be sure of, and Thomas Vert had set that fire in '49 after his wife left him, and, well, you could say there were gaps in local history). But if she had come before, it would've been before living memory, and that did nothing for the town’s collective nerves. 

Every Summer Girl was different, you see. They were a pleasant species in general, soft and smiling, with lithe bodies and big eyes and toothsome smiles. That pleasantness made it easier to look the other way when they, well.... The town even had a few favorites! Girls who claimed their due with such sweetness it really, truly felt like they were doing you a favor. 

But there had been troublemakers before –- Girls who tricked residents to break the Code, Girls who took person after person after person, Girls who wandered into houses and broke all the dishes and pinched the babies and cut off the dogs' tails –- and the townsfolk had to stay alert. 

The town watch was ready in any case. 

Like all Summer Girls, Marisol's skin was pallid and her black eyes were too large for her face. Her hair, a mass of algae-tinged dark curls, was tied back with strands of seaweed. Some thought she looked like a sea fairy. Others thought she looked like the fish that lived in the deepest parts of the ocean and hunted in the dark. Neither thought was necessarily wrong. 

She didn't approach anyone that first day out of the water. Instead, she sat beneath a pier in mismatched clothes while the tide was low, and poked at her legs and feet with too long fingers. Mostly, she stared, motionless, at the water for long stretches of time. 

All this was included as part of the 6pm news bulletin, read by Janine, the perennially chipper station reporter, from a ketchup stained, hand written napkin “report” submitted by two street vendors who worked near the pier. 

Marisol (they'd learned her name two days later, when she asked the Italian ice girl for something to eat) had a quietness to her that unnerved the locals even more. It had little to do with how often she spoke, or her volume or tone, and more to do with every single other thing about her. Other Girls had been quiet, too, but somehow less so. With Marisol, a body never knew if she was listening to nearby gossip or the music on the speakers or her own thoughts, if she was staring so intently at a person or the horizon or a memory. If her body was resting or waiting. 

It was bad form to suspect a Girl of being trouble when she'd done nothing to earn it besides keep to herself, but the town watch nevertheless followed her anxiously and waited for the other shoe to drop. 

That whole first week, the only request Marisol made, besides food, was for a job. She asked the man who ran the tour boats if he had any openings. He said yes, though he didn't. Instead he fired his niece from the ticket booth and put Marisol there instead. She was paid in cash at the end of each day, which she then spent on trinkets and bells and anything deep fried or coated in sugar. 

Beyond asking for the job, she'd made no other demands of the town. Whatever she took, she paid for; what she ate, she consumed in private; where she slept, people could only guess at, but she was always in time for work the next morning. 

It was bizarre.

On the other hand, it was also refreshingly low maintenance. People grew to like her in that tentative way folks with bad pet allergies like a puppy or a kitten. By the end of her first month in Heron's Point, everyone had begun to think they might get off easy this year. 

Then Lex got involved. 

Lex’s father, Skip, had spent his whole life in Heron's Point and knew all the dirty secrets. Lex did not. She’d been born inland and raised by her mother’s family, closer to the city. Skip hadn’t had much to do with her while she was growing up, but they were trying to bridge the gap. Lex had come to Heron's Point that summer to that end, with the benefit of beach to spend the days on. 

In mid-July, one of the laborers on the boardwalk fell and hurt himself too badly to work. Skip, who worked about a half mile down the beach at the marina and had been struggling to find things for his daughter to do, offered Lex’s services for the rest of the season. Lex was plenty happy for the income. Heron’s Point was happy to welcome back and help out a lost daughter.

But Lex didn’t know about the Summer Girls.

When she started working on the same pier with Marisol, all she knew was that Marisol was the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen. 

And to the horror of her father and the townsfolk, the attraction was mutual. 

On breaks, the two girls ate their lunch together, and when the work day was over, they'd often disappear together until dark, when Lex would finally go home. On the job, Lex would make an adoring goof of herself whenever she passed the ticket booth. And she made sure to pass by often. 

When neither were busy, Lex would plant herself at the ticket stand with her phone and show Marisol her favorite cartoons and movies. Marisol would buy her funnel cake and curly fries and deep friend twinkies to share. The tourists thought it was darling. The citizens of Heron's Point were having fits. 

Debates rumbled across the AM airwaves and in town halls and across dinner tables. Should they tell Lex about the Summer Girls? Were they allowed to tell her? She wasn’t a local, but she wasn't a tourist either: where did that put her regarding the Code? Was there a loophole? If there was a loophole, would they still be punished for using it? Was it worth the risk to the town, helping a girl most of them didn't even know? They knew her dad, though. Oh, Lord, how was Skip doing? And on it went for weeks. 

By mid-August, Lex's father had resigned himself to the inevitable. He'd never been a very good father, and now the one time he'd tried, he'd doomed his little girl. He’d tried warning her, just once or twice, dropping pointed hints about Marisol’s otherness and what would happen after the summer ended. Lex hadn’t listened to a word of it. And when he’d dropped her off at work the next morning, Marisol had been waiting. She wanted to have a few words with him. About the Code. 

Skip began to spend a lot of nights at the bar. 

By the end of August, the town was still divided. The majority had decided that the situation was regrettable, but if the Summer Girls counted Lex as an outsider, then they had to as well. But there were vocal dissenters. Lex may not have been one of them, strictly speaking, but she had blood vested in the contract just as far back as anyone else in town, and it was a damn unsettling notion that being raised away from the water made that meaningless. 

A small posse had formed to take matters in hand. Pastor Andy from the Lutheran church, and an alderwoman had broken with the town watch. The bartender, Jake, was sick of Skip bringing the mood down in his bar. A junior reporter from the Heron’s Point weekly newsletter offices. A few others. The mayor's son loaned them his van with all the spare seats taken out to make space.

They’d decided that it was easier to strike at night, when the streets were empty and everyone had crawled back to their hotel rooms and their B&B's to sleep off the sun and sea. When there was no one out and about to see the paneled van pull up alongside Lex as she walked home. No one to see the doughy pastor and wiry barkeep pull her into the back. No one to see the van speed off, heading inland as quickly as the aging machine could go.

They bound Lex's arms and legs -– a struggle, since a summer of heavy lifting and running around on a beach had made her much stronger an out of shape pastor and aging barman had expected –- and they covered her mouth. When she was quiet, they poured out the whole story of Heron's Point, from mysterious beginnings to humdrum, yearly ritual sacrifice.

But they hadn't even gotten a full mile beyond the city limits when they realized she wasn't fighting anymore. In fact, she’d been rolling her eyes a lot. 

They removed the gag. In agonized silence, they listened as Lex revealed that Marisol had told her all of this weeks ago. She knew about the Summer Girls and their arrangement with the town. Obviously, she knew that, come fall, she wouldn’t be seen again; she and Marisol had been talking about whether she wanted to see her mom before she went.  
She knew that people who spent more of their life away from Heron’s Point and the water lost its’ protection, no matter how long established their family was. She knew... a lot of things, actually.

With a screech of wheels, the van swerved and shuddered to a stop in the shoulder lane. The would-be rescuers felt their hearts drop through their feet as, through the windshield, they saw Marisol strode toward them. Beneath the stark light of the streetlamps, she looked more monstrous than any Summer Girl they'd ever seen. She was also soaking wet.

So used to water everywhere, they'd forgotten that the road inland crossed several inlets. One of them gleamed under the lamps and moon light a few yards ahead. And there, by the waters' edge, more Summer Girls. They made terrible silhouettes against the water, standing like sentinels with their fingers webbed and clawed. In the water, strange shapes bobbed up and down with the waves, watching.... 

The screeching of metal broke their terrified silence. Marisol had torn the side of the van open with the ease of a child ripping into wrapping paper. Her face was- they couldn't bear to look at it. Everyone pressed themselves against the remaining walls of the van, frantic to put as much distance between themselves and Marisol as possible.

"Hey, babe!" 

Lex was smiling, wide and joyous as the monster bore down on her. Claws sliced through her bindings, and girl and Girl fell into each other's arms. Then, Marisol pulled her out of the van. 

The other Summer Girls converged around them, bodies poised aggressively between the lovers and the humans in the van. As one, the pack moved to the water, and one by one, they disappeared beneath its surface with Lex. The floating shapes which had watched from afar disappeared beneath the waves as well. 

Pastor Andy was the first to break the silence. 

"Fuck." 

A week later, the cops had performed a perfunctory investigation. Lex was ruled a runaway; Marisol, a drifter; they'd keep an eye out for her but she'd probably come home on her own, blah blah blah and scene. 

Skip and his ex-wife got into a one-sided screaming match outside the bar her father was drinking himself to death in.

The kidnappers prepared wills and prayed for mercy. 

The mayor's son mourned his van.

The people of Heron’s Point held a succession of Town Halls so that everyone could ask their questions and get what answers there were to be had.

Did everyone the Summer Girls took know what they were getting into? Maybe. Would local children be up for grabs too from now on? Not so long as they stayed in Heron’s Point. Was it hypocritical for the people of Heron’s Point to concern themselves about this now, after centuries of just letting things happen? Probably. Should they void the contract? Could they? What would happen to the town; so many people had interfered so badly? 

Some questions would only be answered by time. 

The Labor Day fireworks marked the end of the season. The very last of the tourists departed the next day, relieved to shake off the strange gloom that had encompassed the little town. And with no one left to pretend for, the people of Heron's Point settled to await their fate. 

And wait. 

And wait. 

It was a slow agony as fall turned into winter and nothing happened. Hurricane season passed uneventfully. The fishermen's hauls were as plentiful as ever. The tides were regular, as were the migrations of local birds. There hadn't even been one single remarkable shadow on the moon. Nothing that could ease the pain of waiting. 

It wasn’t until February that the Summer Girls laid down their verdict. A squall swept up the coast, with high winds and merciless waves. But it didn’t make landfall until it reached the little town of Heron’s Point. 

Heron’s Point flooded completely for the first time in more than a century. Trees were felled and roofs were torn off in the wind. Cars went swimming. Shutter and screen doors were ripped off their hinges. Houses were submerged and every road out of town was swept away. But miraculously, mercifully, when the waters receded, all the foundations still stood and no lives had been lost. Well, none beyond those anticipated. 

As the ground sobered up, neighbors went to check on the one-time kidnappers. Surprisingly, their homes and apartments were in the best shape of all. The ground around them was dry and firm. Structurally, they looked untouched. 

There were no bodies inside. But there were parts of bodies, sometimes. Jake the barkeeps hands were left on the floor of his apartment. Pastor Andy's tongue -– they assumed it had been Pastor Andy's, anyway -– was laid out on the communion tray. The alderwoman's house actually was wet, but with blood instead of water. And on it went. 

Skip walked into the ocean when he survived the storm untouched, but the waves kept carrying him back to shore. Hypothermia finally did what the liquor couldn’t and water wouldn't. 

The mayor's son survived, but he'd seen something in the storm and developed an intense hydrophobia. In the end, he ran off to live in a camper in Arizona.

People talked in the aftermath, more honestly and more fully than they ever had. Maybe this was too steep a price to keep the town afloat. Maybe they could keep business coming on their own. Maybe there was no shame in leaving, in building a life somewhere that wasn't so steeped in blood. 

But winter turned to spring, and the nets stayed full to bursting while their neighbor towns up and down the coast struggled. Tourists were making reservations for their summer holidays already. This was home. And the Summer Girls were going to come anyway....

**Author's Note:**

> HOLEEE SHIT I POSTED A THING.
> 
> Is this what growth feels like? I think it is.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this thing that I wrote with my brain and my fingers and my constant, unrelenting anxiety. It has lesbians and strange monsters from the deep, and the internet tells me these are things people like. Let me know if I hit the mark, or if I missed it, or if I used too many commas (impossible but I am a benevolent dictator, willing to entertain a certain degree of dissent). If you really, totally LOVED it, please consider dropping by my Ko-fi page and help me keep the adorable monsters in my life fed. 
> 
> ko-fi.com/drowsyreaper <==(It's me!)


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